Web analytics is the process of measuring your web site, analyzing the data, and making changes based on the analysis. Many businesses are just starting to learn how they can increase the performance of their web site by using web analytics. For many people, their first exposure to web analytics is Google Analytics, a free tool available to everyone.

Although analysis is vital to web analytics, you can't do analysis without good data. Configuring Google Analytics correctly is the key to collecting good data.

This Short Cut provides a thorough description of how the Google Analytics system works, information about many different types of implementations, and ways to avoid common pitfalls. It also shares some best practices to get your setup correct the first time.